Two UC Irvine graduate students have written a new book that delves into the university’s past to uncover an experiential learning program that took place in the heart of the Irvine Ranch.

The book, “Learning by Doing at the Farm,” is set to be published by Soberscove Press in March.

Anthropology graduate student Robert Kett and visual arts graduate student Anna Kryczka joined together to research a 1968 experiment that took place on an undeveloped plot of land on the outskirts of a UC Irvine campus known as the Social Sciences Farm.

At the farm, UC Irvine anthropologists invited indigenous people from their field work locations to stay at the university for a year and teach students about their crafts and culture. What resulted was an unusual social science experiment in an unlikely outdoor laboratory.

“It’s part of a history of Orange County that works against common ways of explaining what Orange County is,” Kett said. “It’s a story of radical experimentation in terms of countercultural politics and strange, and somewhat problematic, social science experimentation. We think it’s very important because it says a lot about our history.”

The craftspeople lived and worked on the farm, which served as a laboratory and breeding ground for new learning and research methods and theories on human differences.

UC Irvine students and faculty studied the indigenous people, which included potters from Mexico, weavers from Guatemala and boat builders from Samoa, and worked alongside them throughout the year.

“The farm was part of this idea to bring the field to the university,” Kryczka said. “And what emerged out of this pedagogical experiment was also an experiment in living as well.”

Prior to the book’s publication, Kett and Kryczka curated an exhibit made up of historic photographs, documents, film and artwork that was displayed at the UCI Contemporary Arts Center in 2012. The motivation for turning their research and exhibition into a book was to give people a “portable archive” Kett said.

Kett and Kryczka will host a question and answer session at the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles on March 11. Information: soberscove.com